IFE

Mexico: A very expensive electoral system.

By Sergio Sarmiento

Even when in 2010, there will not be federal elections, the Electoral Federal Institute (IFE, by its initials in spanish), its asking for a budget of 9.239 millions of pesos for this year. Of these gigantic quantity, 6.215 millions will be spent by the IFE, while three thousand millions will be separated between the political partys.

The IFE says that this budget is a reduction of their expenditure of more than 12.800 millions of pesos of 2009. But they omit in showing that in 2009 there was federal elections and in 2010, there will not be anyone. The fact is that we have created a burocratic and political monster that lives of bleeding a poor country that should use this resources for something more productive.

This costs are only the oficial. Besides there’s a lot of money that enters in the campaings in a suspicious way, and honestly sometimes illegal. The goverments give money to the parties they have risen, but they don’t recognize this. Besides, there’s the enormous real cost of the 32 millions TV and radio spots that were transmitted during the campaing. The IFE functionaries and the politicians say to us that these spots are free. But there’s nothing free in this world. The real cost of these spots easily duplicates the formal cost of the elections.

So we have expensive elections that costs more to the taxpayers that in anyother place in the world. There are elections more expensive, of course, like the ones in the US, but the costs are paid by the people involved in the campaing by private contributions. There are others that are paid with the money of the public treasury, like in many countries of Europe, but their costs are infinitely inferior than ours. Our politicians have gaved us the worst of the worlds. A electoral system paid by the taxpayers, but with similar costs of the countries with a private system.

The IFE has defended their expenditure in the past stating that an important part of this is dedicated to the maintainance of the electoral roll and the electoral ID Cards, which are the most expensive ones in the world. With the rising of a new oficial indentification for the mexicans, which is in the law since 4 decades ago but just now has been approved by the federal government, the electoral ID card will be unnecessary, such ID Card has filled the necessity or requiement to count with an official ID card recognized in the whole country.

The IFE is opossing that the Secretary of Government turn alive this proyect of the new identity card because they don’t want to lose the enourmous quantity of money that has managed for the actual ID Card, which has the disadvantage as national identity, because it stops being emitted during electoral and campaing times.

Not even the wealthier nations of the world will have the luxury of having an electoral system so expensive and inefficient such as the mexican. The fact that we have it, that we are able to spend 9 thousand million of pesos, much more than any other country in campaing times, reveals us that there’s something fundamentally evil in the mexican political system.